


And I'll Bleed This Skyline Dry (Your History is Mine)

by orphan_account



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-14
Updated: 2014-07-14
Packaged: 2018-02-08 20:25:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1955052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jean-Eric is still bitter about being passed-over for the Red Bull seat, but mostly he just misses Dan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And I'll Bleed This Skyline Dry (Your History is Mine)

**Author's Note:**

> Just needed something to take my mind off of Understeers! Plus I love them so much, guh.

The second Jean-Eric wakes up, he knows that today something will change.

He can’t explain how he knows this, but the moment he eases back into consciousness and his eyes open, he knows that today is the day.

So he gets out of bed, gets showered and dressed, all under this immovable cloud of anxiousness. It’s a day off (although there are never any real days off for him), and he goes for a cycle, hoping to clear his head of whatever is making him feel so uneasy. The trees whizz by unseen, he cycles aimlessly, not caring where he’s going. It almost feels like escaping. Almost.

Sure enough, when he returns home, hot and tired, there’s a little red light blinking on his answering machine telling him that he has a new message.

_This is it_. He thinks. He knows.

Turns out Toro Rosso are keeping him on for another year - the voice on the phone does it’s best to make that fact sound like a good thing (it kind of is, with the turnover of past drivers in that team). But all Jean-Eric can think is that he wasn’t good enough, how unfair it is, how he tried so hard. The voice also tells him who got the free Red Bull seat, almost as an afterthought tacked onto the end.

It was Daniel. Of course it was Daniel. More experienced, they said. _More likeable_ , he thought.

And that’s how Jean-Eric finds out Dan is leaving the team. Over an answer phone, in a silent room. Alone.

\----------------------------------

It was the first time they had been alone together in weeks, Jean-Eric had kept previous encounters brief and hurried, for fear of what he might do or say. Red Bull and Toro Rosso were conducting some kind of joint sponsor event, and all four of them were there. Sebastian had been taken to do a photoshoot, and Daniil had just been summoned away to conduct an interview - leaving Dan and Jean-Eric in a holding room, one of many in the sprawling building they were currently in. It was all very nice and corporate, with a plush blue sofa, and a shelf with drinks and trendy nibbles, a cabinet with various awards and trophies in. Everything neat and perfect. Dan must be hating it.

“How’ve you been, mate?” Dan asks him, all easy-going with hands in pockets. Jean-Eric concentrates on the violent purple highlights on his team shirt to avoid looking at Dan’s face.

_How do you think I’ve fucking been?_ He wants to say.

“Good, thanks.” Is what he says instead.

Something ugly and terrifyingly familiar crawls into existence in the pit of Jean-Eric’s stomach then, pulling itself out of a mess of broken dreams and shattered hearts. It sits inside him, black and brooding.

He crosses his arms and leans back against a sideboard, still refusing to meet Dan’s gaze, happy to let the silence extend. He knows Dan hates awkward silences, that he always has to fill them with jokes or laughter. It’s part of what he lo-- _It’s part of nothing._

“That’s good. Great, even.” Dan’s fiddling with something on the other side of the room, some ornament or trinket.

The silence drags on, Jean-Eric can hear his own heartbeat echoing in his ears, along with the faint slithering of the creature in his guts. There are so many things that need to be said, he wishes that Dan would make the first move, wishes that he would just _apologise_. Because after all that’s happened, he still blames Dan. Dan and his stupid grin and his stupid laugh and his stupid fucking face.

Jean-Eric curls his hands into fists to stop them quivering. He turns around to face the wall, counting to ten, focussing on his breathing.

“Why?” He mutters, not sure even if Dan can hear him.

“Why what?”

“Didn’t you care? At all?”

“Jev what are you talking about? Turn around, mate. What’s up?”

So Jean-Eric does turn around, and sees Dan standing there, confused and still holding whatever statuette he was fiddling with. God, where to even begin? How to start without sounding like a petulant jealous child? Because he knows that’s what he will sound like, but it’s not just because he wishes that it was him, that he was in Dan’s place. He wishes that they were promoted _together_. That they were still a team. That’s how it should be.

“When you left, were you even sorry? Just for a second?” He bites it out, looking at Dan from under a heavy brow, the words laced with bitterness.

It has the exact reaction he expects - Dan recoils backwards, eyes wide.

“ _What?!_ ”

“When you left the team, did you--” He’s cut off mid-sentence by Dan, suddenly fired up.

“I didn’t ‘leave the team’, Jev, Jesus! This is how things work!” He pauses, thinking. “Are you jealous? You said you were fine.”

Jean-Eric knew this was coming, the ultimate catch-22 - if he said yes he was an idiot and an awful friend, if he said no he was a liar.

“I’m just… I’m not… I can’t believe you left! After everything!” He tried to keep hold of the anger, tried to let it fuel him.

“Dude for the last time, I didn’t ‘leave’!”

“You _left ME!_ ”

“I was _TAKEN!_ ”

Daniel spits it back with such force that the sentence is almost like a solid physical blow. Jean-Eric blinks, once, hard.

“Do you think I had a _choice_? That I could just be like ‘oh no thanks, I don’t want to drive for the best team in the world, let someone else have it’. Jev, I had to, you don’t say no to that. Tell me you wouldn’t have done exactly the same.”

And of course Jean-Eric can’t answer that, because he knows what he would have done. He’d like to be all haughty and say that he would have stayed with Dan. But they both know that that would have been a lie. They both know that he would have moved too. But he wasn’t chosen. He wasn’t taken.

So he stands there, mute and still seething.

“It _killed_ me, Jev!” Dan runs a ragged hand through his hair, tugging at the dark curls that he’s allowed to grow just that little bit too long. “Because I knew how you would feel, I knew it would be just like this and I didn’t want that. But what could I have done?”

He throws the ornament in his hand against a wall with a dull thud, where it leaves a sizable dent, making Jean-Eric flinch. He never expected Dan to react like this, Dan rarely lost his temper, never lashed out. He expected jokes and for Dan to be all light-hearted and for him - Jean-Eric - to leave with nothing resolved.

“When I got the call, god, all I could think about was you. Because you’d be.. left behind.” He winces. “That’s horrible, you know I don’t mean that. I would never leave you by choice, you understand that right? But they didn’t give me one, I literally could not say no, and then everything was signed and I couldn’t tell anyone about it. That was the worst part. Having to lie to you, sometimes right to your face and I seriously thought I would break so many times. That I couldn’t be strong enough by myself.”

He slumps onto the sofa, leaving Jean-Eric stood against the wall, the rage that engulfed the room minutes earlier now dissipating, evaporating into the air. The seconds ticked by. Ten, twenty.

“I miss you.” The Frenchman says, puncturing the silence. _No point in holding back anymore_. “Dan, I miss you so much.”

Dan leans his head back until it’s resting on the sofa, closing his eyes. “Ditto, mate.”

Those two tiny words hit Jean-Eric like an ocean wave, crushing the dark thing in his stomach and washing away the bile that threatened to overtake him earlier. The way that Dan said them.. With such longing and sadness and emotion. God, how could he ever be mad at _Dan_.

So he moved over to behind the sofa, took a long look at Dan’s upside-down face below him, taking in the curve of his eyelashes, the smattering of stubble on his chin, the almost-invisible scars. And then leaned in, bent his head, and kissed him.

It was awkward because everything was the wrong way around, but the basics were still the same. Memories of months ago flooded his mind as he moved his mouth against Dan’s. They hadn’t done this for a while - the previous times only while drunk after a good race or some party, when they were uninhibited and didn’t care. Jean-Eric always assumed that that’s all it was, a couple of drunken coming-togethers between friends. But then it became _just_ Dan, other kisses felt different. Wrong.

And then the call came and everything changed. There were no more kisses after that.

But today they weren’t drunk. Today Jean-Eric was kissing his friend and Dan was kissing him back.

Dan sighed into him, biting down on his lower lip and sucking hungrily.

“I miss you.” Jean-Eric repeated, the words borne on a breath skittering over Dan’s jaw. “I miss you.” He didn’t know what else to say, or how to show him just how much, so he kept on kissing him. Hopefully his actions spoke louder than his words.

He felt Dan’s hand come up around the sides of his face, the fingers curling around his skull, tugging.

“Come here.” Dan said, between kisses, almost pulling Jean-Eric’s head right off his neck.

Neither of them wanted to break the kiss, so Jean-Eric kept his mouth connected to Dan’s as he maneuvered around the edge of the sofa, twisting and stretching himself, laughing as his nose bumped into Dan’s as he was turning himself around.

He ended up straddling Dan, his legs hooked up either side of him, his knees resting on the sofa. He was pretty sure they’d never been this close before - those other times had just been hurried kisses in a bathroom, a drunken peck in a darkened corner. Nothing like this, body on body, both completely sober and knowing what they were doing with brilliant clarity.

Dan’s hands were up under Jean-Eric’s t-shirt, seeking and stroking, clawing great big lines into his skin. Jean-Eric fists his own hands into Dan’s hair, pushing their faces closer together, forcing his tongue into Dan’s mouth over and over again. He didn’t know how it happened but he felt himself moving against Dan, shifting around on his lap, backwards and forwards in a steady motion. Trying to get as much friction as he could, revelling in feeling Dan’s hardness up against his own.

And the _noises_ Dan was making. Jean-Eric was unsurprised  - Dan was not a quiet person - but he never expected to be so undone by it. The little whimpers and moans that escaped from the Australian’s mouth between kisses were just… Jean-Eric couldn’t remember a time where he had been this turned-on.

“Jev, I..” Dan was trying to say. “Fuck, Jev.”

Jean-Eric smiled into his kiss. “I know, Dan.” More kissing.

“For so long, dude. So long.”

So much time wasted… Jean-Eric pushed his hips down harder into Dan’s lap, making him gasp. He moved his hands lower, hovering above the waistband of Dan’s short for a second, questioning himself for a moment before his fingers began deftly unbuttoning Dan’s jeans with soft little pops.

His hand was about to free Dan’s cock from his boxers when there was the unmistakable sound of voices outside the door. He had completely forgotten where they were - a public building, with the team, and an unlocked door.

They both froze, eyes snapping open, lips still locked together, completely taken by surprise. Jean-Eric strained his ears, listening for more sounds from the outside world. Yes, there it was again, people talking as they walked down the corridor.

He leapt off of Dan’s lap, half-falling over as he did it, Dan hurrying to button up his jeans and trying in vain to will his erection away. No sooner had Jev stumbled upright again than Daniil walked through the door.

“Okay, see you later!” The Russian called to a departing figure as he closed the door behind him. Then he stopped, hand still clasped around the doorknob, eyes obviously taking in the scene in front of him.

Jean-Eric shoved his hands in his pockets, trying to look as normal as he could, achingly aware that his hair was probably a state and that his cheeks were more than a little red. A quick sideways glance at Dan pretty much confirmed his fears. Dan looked like he wasn’t breathing. Or was trying to stifle a laugh. One of the two.

“Hi… guys…” Daniil said slowly, inching his way into the room. “You okay?”

“Fine!”

“Brilliant!”

“Couldn’t be better!”

Jean-Eric couldn’t help himself and smirked at Dan, who still hadn’t managed to peel himself off the couch. Daniil blinked, Jean-Eric could almost see the cogs in his mind turning.

“Err, why is there a hole in the wall?”

Ah, fuck.

“There was an ornament that was looking at me funnily.” Dan piped up, with absolute sincerity.

Daniil blinked hard again, Jean-Eric kind of felt sorry for him, clearly confused at the atmosphere in the room.

“Okay so, I’m gonna go.” He said, backing up into the door with a thunk.

“See you tomorrow!” Jean-Eric said, with probably a little too much pep. He even gave his teammate a little wave.

Daniil frowned, looked back and forth between Dan and Jean-Eric once, twice, and then made a hasty exit, closing the door behind him with a click.

“Oh my god.” Breathed Dan, his head thudding down onto the back of the sofa. “That needs to never happen ever again.”

“Which part? The first part or the part where we terrified the Russian teenager?”

“The last part, definitely _not_ the first part! I think my balls are going to explode…”

Jean-Eric laughed then, a big booming hearty laugh that filled the space with it’s sound. He can’t remember the last time that he laughed like that. The last time he’d felt this free and happy. It was a great feeling. He looked down at Dan, sat there with an expression on his face somewhere between pain and elation.

“Get up.” Jean-Eric smiled, extending a hand for Dan to take. The Australian heaved himself up, but didn’t let go of Jean-Eric’s hand. Instead he stood there, staring at the clasped hands in front of him.

“We should talk y’know.” He says, eyes still downwards, his long fingers poking at Jean-Eric’s knuckles.

“Yes, but I’d rather do this.” And Jean-Eric tilts Dan’s head up with his free hand, enjoys the fact that Dan’s pupils suddenly blow wide open, and kisses him. It’s different from before, this kiss is soft and slow, a caramel-molasses-toffee kind of kiss. Dan drops their hands and slides his own round Jean-Eric’s waist, pulling him closer with a sigh.

“As awesome as this is.” He drawled. “We can’t do this here again.”

Jean-Eric knows that, but just wanted one more kiss, one more taste. But he feel like this could be it, this could be what he was waiting for all that time. Dan never really left. Not inside. All those months of letting the resentment and jealousy fester and grow, when he could have just _spoken_ to Dan. All those months when they could have been doing this. Stupid stubborn racing drivers…

“Hotel room?”

Dan scoffed. “Bit forward, mate. Buy me dinner first?” He grinned an infectious face-splitting grin, Jean-Eric felt himself smiling in reply.

“Take away?”

“Deal.”

They just stood there, smiling at each other like two children that have just discovered that they have something in common and are now automatic best friends. _I was so angry for so long_ , thought Jean-Eric, only now realising that it didn’t matter what team Dan was in, he was still _Dan_. They were still _them_. They had so many shared memories and experiences, a change in team wouldn’t erase that.

And then Sebastian walked through the door.


End file.
